Macedonia snubs rebel truce offer

Macedonian forces have attacked several rebel-held villages

SKOPJE, Macedonia -- Macedonian forces have pounded rebel ethnic Albanian positions -- despite the offer of a unilateral cease-fire by the separatists.

Government forces used helicopter gunships and heavy artillery on Friday to attack a string of villages held by the rebels in the north-east of the country.

Prime minister Ljubco Georgievski called for the destruction of the rebels.

"Macedonia must mercilessly confront the terrorists," he was reported by the Associated Press as saying.

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"Any delay would mean a deepening and spreading of fighting."

The attack comes hours after the rebels, who are fighting for improved rights for the two million ethnic Albanians living in Macedonia, offered a cease-fire -- on condition of not being attacked by government forces -- from midnight on Thursday.

The government of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia had failed to answer the offer, and instead used "all available means," to launch an attack, army spokesman Blagoja Markovski told AP.

Nikola Dimitrov, national security adviser to president Boris Trajkovski, promptly ruled out a deal with the "the terrorists who have shown they are ready to kill and destroy Macedonia."

The army told the MIA state news agency that their attack was to relieve a humanitarian crisis, including the shutdown of water supplies to the 100,000 people of Kumanovo.

Rebels have been accused of shutting the control valves on Wednesday from a reservoir in territory they control.

Macedonian forces roll into action

The rebels' surprise call for a truce has been seen in some quarters as a cynical attempt to prevent retaliatory action for the killing of five government soldiers earlier in the week.

NATO's Secretary-General George Robertson said: "The call for a cease-fire may be seen by some as an olive branch, but of course it follows a fairly murderous attack a few days ago.

"So when you do that and call for a cease-fire, then the response to that is: Put down your arms permanently."

Russian Defence Minister Sergei Ivanov backed such views.

Macedonian Slavs, living in the southern town of Bitola, from where three of the dead soldiers came from, took their own form of revenge on Wednesday and Thursday by attacking businesses and homes of ethnic Albanians.

Police had to use tear gas to disperse the crowds before a curfew was put in place.

Macedonia's parliament is expected to convene on Friday to discuss the crisis and the European Union's foreign policy chief Javier Solana is due to speak.

President Boris Trajkovski had been preparing to announce a plan on Friday to allow the rebels to put down their arms and withdraw from villages in the hills near the border with Kosovo.

But it is unclear whether this will still go ahead.

Trajkovski's plan is broadly modelled on measures NATO took to persuade ethnic Albanian rebels last month to quit an area of neighbouring southern Serbia where they waged a 16-month insurgency.